Reporting on our tastings 4 December 2007

A suggestion for Grape

From Rudy:
Enjoying the detailed notes [in the Recent Releases section], thank you. One minor issue though, when you taste as a group and arrive at a consensus or average score, it really stops any hope that the reader has of calibrating their palate with an individual reviewer. What I think would be helpful here is if each person tasting was to publish their own, unamended/undiscussed score to give an idea of the range of opinions (a la World of Fine Wine). You could still put out an average score as your headline number as you currently do, but I think it would be more accountable to do both.

Response from the editor:
Thanks for the suggestion, Rudy. I agree that it is usually more useful to have one person's score than an average - if you know how the taster's prejudices and preferences relate to your own, you can get a better idea of whether you'd like the wine yourself. When it's an averaged score from a group, you don't learn much, always.

In fact, we try to avoid anything like an averaged score, for that very reason. We actually try to arrive at a score we all agree on - or at least approximately agree on: if there's only a half-point or so difference, no-one usually stands on principle and thinks that that is a significant matter. It must be said that sometimes one or more of us will change our minds about the score after discussion – we always discuss the wines and our reactions. If one person continues to be higher or lower. that will be mentioned. If there's a lot of disagreement we either come up with an average and point out that there were differences in rating, or else the person who is doing the writing up of the note will use his/her own score and report ofn the differences.

But you know this and are suggesting something a bit different. We will discuss your idea, which is a valid one - though I feel that if there is only a difference of half-a-point or so, reporting it could give a wrong idea of the value of a score - which we feel is less important than the tasting note, really. Also, we value the opportunity of discussing the wine and sometimes changing our own scores slightly - I think that the more considered opinion is usually the better opinion (certainly in my own case). Certainly it might be a good idea to give the actual scores when there is a significant difference of opinion. We will talk it over.